In last Thursday’s column I listed past Rockford police chiefs appointed by the Rockford Board of Fire and Police Commissioners for the benefit of embattled Police Chief Chet Epperson’s lawyer Thomas McGuire of Long Grove, who insists the board has no authority to appoint, discipline or fire police chiefs. I went back as far as Chief Thomas Boustead in the early 1950s.

The commissioners are trying to hear a complaint brought against Epperson by the police union over his handling of a 2013 welfare check at the home of Lloyd Johnston, who leads the local NAACP chapter. Officers contend that in a phone call with Johnston, Epperson improperly overruled the authority of officers at the scene.

But for some reason, Epperson, through his lawyer, is trying to block commissioners from hearing the union’s complaint, and McGuire came up with a unique argument that has Rockfordians scratching their heads: McGuire says the commissioners don’t have authority over the chief, that he was hired improperly by commissioners and therefore is the “de facto” chief.

Peterson was chief from 1965 to 1985; he, too, was appointed by fire and police commissioners. Now 91, Peterson is in good health and has a steel trap memory. He’s an expert on the history of the police department and its past chiefs.

Here’s the starting point of our conversation: fire and police commissioners appoint, discipline and remove police chiefs unless a city council passes an ordinance declaring another method of appointment. Peterson pointed out some history I hadn’t covered.

Peterson said there was an attempt to pass an ordinance to have aldermen name the chief, but it was rejected. He said I’d find it in our archives; sure enough, it was in the Nov. 3, 1943, Rockford Morning Star. The front page story is headlined, “Bloom’s board to name next police chief, bill shifting power to council fails.”

The story says, “Mayor C. Henry Bloom’s board of fire and police commissioners will name Rockford’s next chief of police as the result of the city council rejection, by an 8 to 11 vote, last night, of an ordinance which provided that the chief be named by the aldermen. The seven Progressive Party aldermen and four Independent aldermen teamed together to defeat the measure, introduced by Ald. Harold Williams. The ordinance was based on a new state statute providing for the appointment of the chiefs of police and fire departments by the city council if aldermen wished to assume such authority.”

Page 2 of 2 - “As a result of the council’s action, the board of fire and police commissioners will automatically appoint a successor to Chief of Police Charles G. Manson, whose retirement becomes effective Nov. 24.”

Chief Peterson told me the back story: aldermen who wanted the power to appoint the chief couldn’t agree on who the chief should be. That sealed the fate of the proposed ordinance, because some aldermen who previously indicated they’d vote yes, voted no instead, the story said.

In 1940, Manson was the first chief appointed by the fire and police commissioners, Peterson said. Although the original state statute creating fire and police commissions took effect very early in the 20th century, Rockford’s chief, August E. Bargren, was grandfathered in. Bargren, born in Sweden and brought to America by his parents when he was 5, joined the city’s small police force in 1890; in 1894 he became chief, a job he held until retiring in 1940, rounding out a jaw-dropping 50-year career on the force.

On May 4, 1940, an estimated 700 people crowded into the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Faust to honor Bargren with a Gold Jubilee party. The chief was so overwhelmed with emotion that he couldn’t deliver his prepared remarks. He asked that they be published in the newspaper.

“Time has given me an order,” Bargren wrote. “It is to lay down the active role I have had in the Rockford Police Department for 50 years. I do not pretend that it is an easy order, for I have lived my work. But time is the great chief who commands all of us, and we obey.”

I’m intrigued by this man. I may write more about the man Chief Peterson calls “Augie” Bargren.